There's still time to catch the Freeland Walleye Festival
By Steve Griffin for the Midland Daily News Published: Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:10 AM EDT

Proudly saying she caught two fish, Talia Hare, 4, holds up a trout fish as she and her sister, Alyssa Hare, 9, feel its slimy body at the Tittabawassee Township Park children's fishing pond Saturday during the Freeland Walleye Festival. The pond was filled with over 400 trout for the event and free food was provided to those in attendance.

One’s assessment of Saturday’s walleye fishing – except for the catching, which seemed universally good – varied greatly depending on where one fished.

”You couldn’t ask for a nicer opener,” said Al Thomsen, tending his boat while nephew Robert Schneider went for the tow vehicle at the Robert Caldwell boat launch downstream of Midland on the Tittabawassee River. Three anglers in that boat caught their limits of five fish each.

It was about 9 a.m. on the opening day of the walleye fishing season on inland waters of the Lower Peninsula, including the Tittabawassee River. Waters were relatively clear and low, and temperatures in the delightful 70s.

And the river was full of fish, despite the hefty numbers being steadily removed by anglers in boats and on the banks.

Gabe Grahan of Saginaw caught his limit, too, but had a different perspective.

“It was horrid,” he said of fishing on Saginaw Bay, where winds lashed waves to six feet and more. His five-fish catch weighing a total of 19.75 pounds put him toward the top of the standings in the 24th annual Freeland Walleye Festival, but he’d paid for them with his comfort.

“We went out at daybreak,” he said about 4 p.m. Saturday, at the weigh-in site, “and just got beat up all day.”

On the Tittabawassee, Thomsen, a former Midland now living in Lake City, said he and his son Roger, of Linwood, and Schneider collected their combined limit of 15 walleyes in just a couple of hours after launching.

Walleyes must be 15 inches to be legal; theirs were 17 to 21 inches long. They’d only had to toss back three shorter than the minimum, Al Thomsen said, and they’d released five small-but-legal walleyes.

“We just happened to hit a honey hole,” said Al Thomsen, “and at first just smacked them. It calmed down for awhile but then we began smacking them again.”

The winning approach, as it is for most Tittabawassee walleye fans, was a lead-headed jig baited with a plastic, grub-style lure.

That rigging has two strong advantages: it catches fish, and it’s cheap when lost on the snag-filled river.

Anglers generally bob the jigs near bottom while the boat drifts downstream. They motor back upstream to re-drift productive stretches.

Jeff Supinger of Saginaw surveyed the Caldwell parking lot a few hours after dawn. “There’s people leaving and people who’ve left,” said Supinger he prepared his boat for launching. “I’ve got to believe they’re catching fish.”

Supinger and a partner would offer jigs and night crawlers, and he predicted a couple of weeks of good fishing. “It all depends on water temperature,” he said. “When it gets warm, they’ll drop back to the (Saginaw) Bay.”

The Bay had been their original destination, (“All the big fish, the tournament winners, come from the Bay”) but they found it too windy when they drove there Saturday. “That’s why we’re late getting started here,” he said.

Marvin Hershberger of Clare and his party had gotten an early start at Midland, fishing as soon as the season opened at midnight. Now, a couple of hours after dawn, they’d decided to quit with 13 fish – just two shy of a three-angler limit – in their boat.

“It was kind of a long night,” he said. “We could have stayed and finished up (the limit), but figured it’s time to go home.”

“It’s better than most years,” said the veteran Tittabawassee opener veteran. “Quite a few people are walking up (to their cars) with their limits.”

Hershberger praised the good weather, noting that “Last night, we thought we were going to get pounded a couple of times” by rain and/or thunderstorms, “but one time it passed us on one side, another time the other side,” leaving them unmolested, then, in the middle of great fishing.

Carl Neuenfeldt of the Freeland Lions Club said 404 seniors and 56 juniors had registered for the Freeland Walleye Festival tournament, “a few more seniors and a few less juniors” than last year. With more than an hour of weigh-in time remaining Saturday, nearly one-third of the seniors had weighed in an average of about 10 pounds of fish each.

Tournament fishing continues today, with weigh-in at the Tittabawassee Township Park (on Midland Road near M-47) from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and prizes to be awarded immediately afterwards.

Top Anglers (through Saturday’s fishing) (hometowns not available)

Seniors:

Tom Witkowski 23.7 pounds

William Griffore 23.3

Bob Witkowski 23.2

Martin Jastrzembowski 21.75

Kal Ustishen 21.1

Juniors

Dustin Leslie 17.7

Cameron Formssa 15.9

Jamie Kisser 15.55

Gregory Gorsline 14.95

Austin Bruns 14.8
 

http://ourmidland.com/articles/2009/04/28/local_news/doc49f3c5692a88f136844568.txt

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